Layer-1 blockchain Solana may be evolving into a “one-trick pony” for memecoin generation and trading, according to a recent Standard Chartered report.

According to a May 27 Standard Chartered research report shared with Cointelegraph, Solana “dominates in areas that demand high-volume, low-transaction-cost solutions” due to its design prioritizing fast and cheap transaction confirmation. The report suggested that this has had an unintended consequence:

“So far, this has been mostly in memecoin trading, which accounts for the majority of activity on Solana (as measured by ‘GDP’, which is application revenue).”

Standard Chartered said the memecoin frenzy served as a stress test for Solana’s scalability but came with drawbacks due to the volatility and speculative nature of such assets. As memecoin trading volumes decline, the bank warned that Solana may struggle to maintain momentum.

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Memecoin trading passed its peak

The report said Solana-based memecoin activity is past its peak, and “declining usage and trading ‘cheap’ are not a good mix.” The bank suggested that Solana should expand into other sectors that require processing large volumes of transactions cheaply and quickly.

Solana decentralized exchange volume. Source: Standard Chartered

Per the report, those sectors could include high-throughput financial apps and traditional consumer apps such as social media. Still, scaling such applications may take years, according to the bank, with dire consequences for Solana:

“As a result, we expect Solana to underperform Ethereum over the next two to three years, before catching up, at least in real terms.”Standard Chartered’s crypto target prices. Source: Standard Chartered

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Solana’s edge is fading

Solana has long positioned itself as a fast and inexpensive layer-1 blockchain with smart contract support, competing directly with Ethereum. However, that edge may be narrowing.

Average transaction fees on Solana and Arbitrum. Source: Standard Chartered

Ethereum layer-2 platforms have caught up with Solana in terms of average transaction cost since the Dencun network upgrade in March 2024. This shift has put pressure on Solana’s value proposition as the cheapest high-throughput blockchain. Standard Chartered acknowledged that Ethereum’s modular design, which separates data availability, execution and consensus, has allowed it to scale more efficiently while preserving decentralization:

“The modular approach allows Ethereum to scale transactions at a low cost (post-Dencun upgrade) while maintaining the security benefits of a highly decentralised mainnet blockchain.”

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MARA Holdings, formerly Marathon Digital Holdings, reached a new all-time high in Bitcoin mining revenue, fueled by its recent surge to a record price.

The company’s annualized mining revenue exceeded $752 million on May 27, according to data from CryptoQuant, making it the most profitable day in the company’s history. Marathon is currently the world’s largest publicly traded Bitcoin (BTC) mining firm by market capitalization.

“Quarterly reports are slow. Onchain shows revenue in real time,” CryptoQuant founder and CEO Ki Young Ju wrote in a May 27 X post, confirming the milestone. 

Marathon’s record revenue surge occurred days after Bitcoin rose to a new all-time high of $112,000 on May 22, a development attributed by some analysts to Japanese bond market turbulence, which saw bond yields rise to new highs amid economic turmoil in the country.

BTC mining revenue, MARA, year-to-date chart. Source: CryptoQuant

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The revenue surge comes two weeks after MARA’s earnings report for Q1, which missed Wall Street estimates by 0.35%. The company’s Bitcoin production fell 19% year-over-year, primarily due to the April 2024 Bitcoin halving, which cut block rewards in half from 6.25 to 3.125 BTC.

The 10 largest Bitcoin mining firms. Source: Companiesmarketcap

Marathon is the world’s largest Bitcoin mining firm with a $5.18 billion market capitalization, according to Companiesmarketcap data.

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MARA’s Bitcoin holdings surpass $5 billion

Despite the reduction in production, Marathon has continued to expand its Bitcoin holdings.

As of May 27, MARA’s Bitcoin holdings were 48,237 BTC worth over $5.28 billion, making the Bitcoin mining company the world’s second-largest corporate Bitcoin holder with over 0.23% of the total supply, Bitbo data showed.

Largest corporate Bitcoin holders. Source: Bitbo

The top spot still belongs to Strategy (formerly MicroStrategy), which holds over $63 billion in Bitcoin.

Despite the revenue surge, daily miner revenues averaged around $50 million, significantly below historic peaks of $80 million, signaling that there is still “room to climb back to those previous highs,” noted macro researcher and CryptoQuant author Axel Adler, in a May 27 X post.

Source: Axel Adler

Marathon adopted Bitcoin as a strategic treasury reserve asset in July 2024, when it added $124 million worth of BTC to its balance sheet.

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Blockchain company StarkWare has unveiled zero-knowledge (ZK) prover STARK Two (S-two), enabling enhanced privacy and verification on everyday devices like phones, laptops and browsers. 

The company said the new ZK prover allows users to generate complex cryptographic proofs from the client side. This means users can generate ZK-proofs directly on their devices instead of relying on a server or cloud infrastructure, opening the door for faster and more private applications across the internet. 

“S-two will bring STARK proving to everyday devices, and open the door for new real-world proving use cases,” said Eli Ben-Sasson, StarkWare co-founder and CEO, adding that the tool could empower the next wave of ZK applications. 

The company said the ZK prover is now available in public alpha and is set to roll out on Starknet, its Ethereum layer-2 scaling solution, later this year.  

StarkWare says new ZK prover is 39 times faster than old solutions 

StarkWare said that benchmark tests for the S-two ZK prover showed that it was 39 times faster than previous solutions. The performance leap enables smoother experiences in privacy-enhancing applications. 

The upgrade also allows use cases in private transactions, ZK-based identity and verifiable artificial intelligence. StarkWare said S-two runs on CPUs, GPUs and will soon be on browsers. 

“For years we’ve called the prover our magic wand, a tool that transforms complex computation into a simple proof,” Ben-Sasson said. “Now, the wand has become a lightsaber in your pocket, something anyone can wield, instantly, from your own device.”

According to StarkWare, developers can build with S-two, adding that its alpha release supports hardware targets. Furthermore, the company said ZK ecosystem participants like Kakarot, Nexus, ZAN and AntChain OpenLabs have already adopted the technology. 

Kakarot uses S-two inside ETHProofs to generate Ethereum block proofs more efficiently, while Nexus is standardizing RISC-V traces to align with S-two’s architecture. Meanwhile, ZAN and AntChain OpenLabs are adding GPU acceleration to push the prover’s performance even further.

Use cases for S-two zero-knowledge prover

StarkWare chief operating officer Oren Katz told Cointelegraph that S-two marks a shift in how ZK-proofs are used in daily lives. Generating validity proofs directly in devices will allow privacy-preserving features in messaging, payments and digital identity. 

“You can prove a payment was valid without showing your balance, or verify identity without revealing personal details,” Katz added. 

Katz said that even salary payments could be made onchain with full transparency and no exposure of sensitive information. He dubbed the development a “big step toward bringing zero-knowledge tech into the mainstream.”

Beyond privacy, Katz said, local proof generation also unlocks use cases in other industries. The executive told Cointelegraph that it can allow gamers to play offline and later generate cryptographic proof of their achievements. 

“An operator, instead of running all logic onchain to prove integrity, can run it on their own servers and simply generate a proof that it was executed correctly,” Katz added.

Related: Ethereum co-founder responds to Sweden’s cashless-society rethink

New ZK prover follows Ethereum’s privacy push

The launch of StarWare’s upgraded ZK prover follows Ethereum’s push for better privacy. On April 11, Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a roadmap that addressed privacy enhancements for wallets, decentralized finance (DeFi) applications and infrastructure. 

Buterin advocated implementing privacy-enhancing norms and features across the Ethereum ecosystem, including adding privacy tools in ETH wallets. 

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